A recent study suggests that children with mothers who use marijuana are more likely to try it at a younger age. According to the research, when mothers use marijuana during the first 12 years of their child’s life, the children are more likely to start using cannabis at an earlier age than those with mothers who don’t use it.

Natasha A. Sokol, lead investigator of the research said, “Early initiation is one of the strongest predictors of the likelihood of experiencing health consequences from marijuana use. In a shifting regulatory environment in which we expect adult marijuana use to become more normative, developing a deeper and more nuanced understanding of social risk factors for early initiation is a critical step in intervention design and delivery.”

“Incorporating maternal cannabis use into our understanding of the important risk factors for early initiation may help us better identify at-risk youth for more tailored or intensive prevention strategies,” Natasha added.

They evaluated the data for 4,440 children and 2,586 mothers for the effect of maternal marijuana use between a child’s birth and age 12 on that child’s subsequent marijuana initiation, controlling for potentially important factors related to the child’s early life behaviour and cognition and the family’s socioeconomic position and social environment.